Bruno Waterfield has been the Brussels correspondent for the Telegraph since 2007. He has been reporting on politics and European affairs for over 13 years, first from Westminster and then from Brussels since January 2003.

The EU elections that we can only lose

I have a strong feeling that on Sunday night as election results, dominated by low turnout, come into Brussels there will be the old complaint that the European Union simply does not have the voters that it deserves.

EU types see public indifference and hostility to what goes on in elevated bodies such as the European Parliament as a communication problem - we simply don't get it.

"Why, oh why," is the constant complaint I hear from MEPs and EU officials, "is it that the media and voters do not understand all the good things that we do for them."

This is why the EU spends so much time trying to communicate (see here for dumb and dumber), to break through our ignorance and to transmit enlightened information about the good works delivered to us by our rulers.

There is an interesting piece, here in the Australian, by Prof. Frank Furedi that unpicks some of the underlying politics behind the euro elections and elite unease when people are wheeled onto the EU stage – even as extras.

I have written at some length on this blog about how the EU has become an important form, held in common by all European national administrations, for the conduct of politics in a public free zone.

"The EU's hostile response to recent referendums in France, the Netherlands and more recently in Ireland, reveals that it is a Union of rulers united in mistrust of the people, not a Union of leaders prepared to make a case and to take their people with them," I wrote for the Manifesto Club last year.

"Political structures, both at national and EU level, have increasingly become a machine for transmitting decisions taken by enlightened bodies down to voters. This development comes at a moment when the political classes and establishments across Europe are unable take voters with them."

The EU, as with many other governmental structures and practices in Whitehall, is not really made for us and shows our rulers (as we have seen with Westminster MPs) to have the mentality of bureaucrats not political leaders.

As Prof Furedi puts it institutions such as the EU and events such as the European elections tend to confirm "people's cynicism towards conventional political life".

"Worse still, the insulation of decision-making directly contributes to the hollowing out of public life, which far too many people see as pointless and irrelevant," he writes.

"In such circumstances movements that are able to politicise people's anger and dissatisfaction are able to make significant headway. So it is not surprising that right-wing nationalist parties have succeeded in gaining momentum."

Apart from the eurosceptic Ukip (whose desire to return to a 1970s little England is not my cup of tea), the political mainstream has essentially campaigned negatively, raising the spectre of a triumph for BNP extremists unless people get out to vote.

Vote for us or else the fascists win – it ain't much of a pro-European or any other kind of argument.

Many commentators have observed a "paradox" that as the European Parliament is about to be consulted on more legislation (it is not a body that makes laws) under the Lisbon Treaty, yet more voters are uninterested.

"The EU will in all likelihood face an enormous and embarrassing paradox. At the heart of its operations will be a multinational parliament with more powers to affect people's lives than at any stage in the continent's post-1945 story of integration. But if elected by only a shrunken minority of citizens, it would represent a sorry state of affairs for those who care about the EU and democracy," the FT noted last week.

The real paradox, however, as Prof Furedi puts it, "is that the culture of insulated decision-making has created an environment that is hospitable to the growth of political frustration and bitterness".

Low turnout and gains for nationalists or extremists will inevitably be seen as "our fault" based on the public's perceived inability to know what is good for them.

It will be used to confirm the "we know best" outlook of our rulers, to reinforce the cynicism and the low expectations in which the public's capacities are held.

Whether it is 80 per cent, 75 per cent or whatever, this figure is often used to underline how important the European Parliament is, either to make the nationalist case for a eurosceptic or to shore up the self-importance of a mainstream MEP (see here for an egregious example).

The fundamental significance of the EU, or any other state form, is less about how many laws it makes than what its structures and practices tell us about how politics is conducted.

Addressing this question also helps us get to grips with some of the new types of legislation and regulation we see, laws and administration based, like political structures, on deep rooted mistrust of people.

This is particularly evident in the area of civil liberties – both at home and at the EU level, read here and here. There are other forms too.